People are disenchanted with mainstream politics. Might the same be true of political theatre? In his 2007 survey of the last half-century or so of British drama, State of the Nation, Michael Billington argues that such drama forms the backbone of post-war theatre. Another critic, Aleks Sierz, would have us believe likewise: his last book, Rewriting the Nation, reads the previous decade's new writing through the prism of nationality politics in Britain. However, a few weeks ago, playwright Dennis Kelly – himself considered one of the foremost political playwrights – gave an intriguing speech in which he claimed that "political theatre is a complete fucking waste of time." Is he right?

Kelly's speech essentially warned that theatre isn't going to drastically change the world in one fell swoop; to pretend otherwise is naive. What it can do, however, is win over the hearts and minds of its audience. That rarely involves a snap epiphany of fireworks and fanfares. Kelly does, however, leave out a fairly enormous factor: form. He's concerned with the issue-based play, which usually exemplifies a real-world issue with a narrative.

However, theatre can actually do something: it can function on a non-representational level. As Sophie Nield wrote on this blog at the time of the 2010 student protests, theatre can be an act of resistance in its own right – and vice versa. In fact, looking through recent listings, this sort of what you might call active political theatre outweighs the representational sort.

Take Kieran Hurley's Hitch and Gary McNair's Crunch, which are sharing a double bill at Battersea Arts Centre in London this week. Hurley looks his audience in the eye and talks us through his participation in the G8 protests in L'Aquila in 2009. He explains his reasons, always trying to convince us directly. The show is a continuation of the act it depicts. McNair, meanwhile, tries to persuade us to shred our hard-earned cash. He wants to convince us to make a real, if only symbolic, gesture of defiance.

Or take Uninvited Guests' Make Better Please, soon to arrive at Newcastle's Northern Stage, a tongue-in-cheek shamanic ritual to heal a broken world. It knows it can't right the wrongs it presents but – as a pure cycle of catharsis – the piece has a direct impact on the way each of us feels. It tries to send us back into that broken world with a newfound energy. The same was true of a recent show, Tenet, at London's Gate, which used gentle participation and lecture techniques to convince us that the times we're in need a fresh, radical approach.

The best example of this approach I've seen recently is Chris Goode's 9, part of the Transform season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Goode and his collaborators worked with nine non-professional performers for a week, helping each to make a self-portrait for performance. The content was down to the nine individuals, with the artists acting more or less as consultants. Of the nine pieces, only one happened to be overtly "political": a soap-box moment by social worker Benjamin Fisk. However, 9 was an intensely political process and event. It involved a major regional theatre with an annual government subsidy of £1.5m turning its facilities and artists over for the sake and service of its constituents. And if Dennis Kelly thinks that's a waste of time, I'll start a picket line outside Matilda.